• Fear and Loathing at DEFCON 22

    08/26/2014 at 15:58 • 0 comments

    [by Aleksandar Bradic]

    Nothing says “Welcome to Vegas” like a massive turbulence on a plane full of drunk people who, instead of holding on to their seats, frantically laugh and shout “we’re all going to die!” At 105 Fahrenheit outside, the heat was getting into everyone’s head. After a bumpy touchdown, the in-flight entertainment system rebooted, and a black terminal screen flashed onto everyone’s face:

    RedBoot(tm) bootstrap and debug environment [RAM]
(MAS eFX) release, version ("540060-212" v "0.1.02") - built 12:00:35,
Nov 19 2004

    Read the entire article at Hackaday.com

  • Hat Hash Hacking at DEFCON

    08/26/2014 at 15:55 • 0 comments

    [by Mike Szczys]

    You probably remember that for DEFCON I built a hat that was turned into a game. In addition to scrolling messages on an LED marquee there was a WiFi router hidden inside the hat. Get on the AP, load any webpage, and you would be confronted with a scoreboard, as well as a list of usernames and their accompanying password hashes. Crack a hash and you can put yourself on the scoreboard as well as push custom messages to the hat itself.

    Read the entire article at Hackaday.com

  • SMT and Thru-Hole Desoldering

    08/26/2014 at 15:52 • 0 comments

    [by Bill Herd]

    My introduction to electronic manufacturing was as a production technician at Pennsylvania Scale Company in Leola PA in the early 1980’s. I learned that to work on what I wanted to work on I had to get my assigned duties done by noon or thereabouts. The most important lesson I had learned as a TV repairman, other than not to chew on the high voltage cable, was to use your eyes first. I would take a box of bad PCB’s that were essentially 6502 based computers that could count and weigh, and first go through inspecting them; usually the contents were reduced 50% right off by doing this. Then it was a race to identify and fix the remaining units and to keep my pace up I had to do my own desoldering.

    Read the entire article at Hackaday.com